Page 107 of South of Justice

Ryan jerked his chin toward the perimeter. “Fence. Now.”

They half-ran, half-hobbled through the smoke, the ground shuddering beneath them. Lucía’s breath rasped behind him. A final explosion went off somewhere close, metal clanging, glass screaming, and then they were at the fence.

Ryan kicked the loosened wire free, the metal groaning as it curled outward. Beyond it stretched the desert: black, endless, silent.

“Go,” he said, shoving Lucía through. The heat behind them was almost physical now, pressing at his back. The airfield burned, painting the night orange. Alarms still wailed faintly over the crackle of fire.

Ryan turned and grabbed Gates’s arm, hauling him through the gap.

They ran.

The ground sloped down from the fence line, loose gravel giving way to dry scrub. The orange Beetle waited where they’d left it, parked under a mesquite tree, its absurd color glowing like a target in the half-light.

Ryan reached it first, wrenching open the driver’s door. “Get in?—”

The word caught in his throat. Lucía wasn’t moving.

She stood ten feet back, breath ragged, pistol raised. The wind tugged at her baggy shirt. Her hand didn’t tremble.

She had the gun pointed at Gates.

Ryan’s blood turned cold. “Lucía?—?”

“Step away from the car,” she said quietly, like she wasn’t asking.

Gates blinked, once. Confusion gave way to wariness. “You’re kidding me with this shit.”

Lucía’s eyes stayed on him. “Javier told me something, right before he died. He said you were playing us and had been the whole time.”

Ryan turned to Gates, something heavy dropping into his stomach. “Tell me that’s not true.”

For a heartbeat, Gates said nothing. Then, finally, he said, “I wasn’t working for Javier.”

Lucía’s voice was like ice. “But you were working with them. Phalanx.”

The pause that followed was the wrong answer.

Ryan stared at the marshal. He’d known Gates longer than anyone in this nightmare. And while he’d never fully trusted him, he’d at least thought he knew him.

“I didn’t know about the kid,” Gates snapped. “I swear. And I didn’t know Javier was the buyer until too late.”

Ryan laughed under his breath. “But you thought you could play both sides. Sell the ledger, save the kid, get out clean.”

Gates looked at him. The defensive expression on his face fell away and suddenly he just looked tired. “I thought I could manage it. That I still had control.”

Lucía didn’t lower the gun. “You made a deal to betray us,” she said. “You came down here acting like the hero. And all the while you were just another bastard looking to cash out.”

Ryan stared at him, something acid burning at the back of his throat. “You judged me,” he said quietly. “You sat across from me and told me I’d betrayed everything we stood for.”

Gates didn’t deny it.

“Thing is,” Ryan continued, “you were just better at hiding it. That’s all. I knew I’d crossed a line. You just learned how to decorate yours with noble excuses.”

Gates’s jaw twitched. “We all crossed lines. I just crossed mine later than you.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Lucía said, although she kept her finger on the trigger. “I probably should, but I’m not. But you’re not coming with us.”

Gates shrugged, holding up his hands like he meant no harm. Like he’d never meant them any harm. Then he stepped back from the car slowly, the firelight casting his shadow long across the gravel. Lucía didn’t move until he was gone, just a shape swallowed by the dark.